Ghosts opens with a shipwreck, leaving a party of sightseers temporarily marooned on an island. The stranded castaways make their way towards the refuge of the isle's reclusive savant; but the big isolated house which is home to Professor Silas Kreutznaer and his laconic assistant, Licht, is also home to another, unnamed presence . Onto this seemingly haunted island, where a strange singing hangs in the air, Banville drops a scrumptious cast of characters - including a murderer - and weaves a tale where the details are clear but the conclusion polymorphous - shifting appearances, transformations and thwarted assumptions make this world of uneasy calm utterly enthralling. 'As fascinating, complex, stimulating and energetic as any work of art . A work which proves Banville as a master, the artist in total control of his craft' The Times 'John Banville's funniest book . another triumph by our most outrageously inventive and daring novelist' The Sunday Independent 'Makes this astonishingly attractive novelist one of the most important writers now at work in English - a key thinker, in fact, in fiction' The London Review of Books Now part of the Picador Collection, a series showcasing the very best of modern literature.